Opposition leader Simon Busuttil this evening drew comparisons between the government’s plan to postpone local council elections and the democracy protests in Hong Kong.
“The Chinese government wants to choose the candidates for the elections in Hong Kong, an autonomous region of China. In Malta the Maltese government wants to do away with the council elections altogether,” Dr Busuttil told a meeting of the Nationalist Party administrative council in Gozo.
The Labour Party’s democratic credentials were already blemished by events of the past, particularly between 1981 and 1987, he said.
And now the prime minister had said he wanted to put off local council elections for five years.
The PN, he said, would continue to insist that the elections should go ahead in terms of the laws which the Labour Party itself had voted for.
The government, he argued, could not play about with democracy. The claim that postponing the local elections would save funds did not hold water, more so because the government found the money to splash out elsewhere.
GOVERNMENT BORROWING UP BY €413m UNDER LABOUR
In his address Dr Busuttil renewed his concerns about the economy. The government, he said, was basing the economy on public sector jobs. It had promised the EU to reduce the public service but had done the contrary. Over the past 13 months, while 1,600 civil servants retired, the government engaged 3,700, or 3,100 if one excluded the 600 bus service workers.
The PN was not against recruitment where this was needed, he said, but economic growth could not be based on public sector jobs, because that was not sustainable. At this rate, the government would engage 14,000 in five years, and this would worsen a financial situation which was already deteriorating.
Official figures showed that up to last August, the government had raised its borrowing by €413 million, Dr Busuttil observed. The government was basing itself on the fact that it would have one-off sources of income this year or next year. But while a power station was only sold once, the government was making recurrent expenses, such as through excessive employment.
The impact of this imbalance was already being seen, with growth in average wages having slowed down, even in the public sector. Figures were also already showing how the number of those at risk of poverty was on the increase.
In other parts of his speech Dr Busuttil referred to the health sector. One had to wonder, he said, what had become of the Labour roadmap. Eighteen months after this government took office, people were complaining about crowded wards, long waiting lists and out of stock medicines. In some areas, the situation had worsened.
Dr Busuttil devoted part of his address to the efforts being made to restructure the Nationalist Party and announced that a convention for all the party members would be held at the end of the month.
He also announced that 31 new candidates had been selected for the local council elections, which the party insists should be held next March.
He also said that in the coming days he would announce the chairpersons of 10 policy fora which would discuss updating of the party’s policies in as many subjects.
In his address Dr Busuttil also paid tribute to former minister Giovanna Debono, who will not contest the next general election.